Uber in Taiwan

Since 2009, Uber platform is developed over 500 cities and 81 countries (Kim), hundreds of thousands of new drivers signing up every month and total equity funding up to 8.81 billion dollars (Pardon). Everyone knows Uber, including you. Uber means a cheaper taxi, convenience, and transportation. Although Uber is cheaper, its quality isn’t worse than the normal taxi. ‘“It’s like a taxi — only quicker, cleaner, and a little bit magical”’(Wikipedia). Those Uber cars should be 2002 or newer. Uber is not only representing “car” anymore. They developed into UberEats, the service of online food order and delivering the food to you, Moto, UberCHOPPER, helicopters services, Uber BOAT, etc (Wikipedia).

I have many experiences of taking Uber in different countries. The platform of Uber is quite beneficial to us, choosing the size of car you want, showing how many cars around you, how long you gonna wait, estimating the price before booking and including GPS. Especially the price of taxi in Europe is quite high and we can’t guess how much is it and how far is our destination when we haven’t been there before. Inside of the cars is quite clean and sometimes the drivers will put some bottles of water and tissue paper in the backseat. Those drivers will help us to carry the luggage and introduce local history, food, language, tourist attractions, etc. Drivers are polite to their passengers and won’t smoke or chew betel nuts.

Unfortunately, on February 10th, Taiwan hit the pause button to Uber. Before this happened, a lot of supporters of Uber have rallied for Uber to be legal, “Since launching four years ago, more than 15 million journeys have been booked through its app across just for Taiwanese cities” (Sui). Taxi industry wants Uber to disappear because they have the same market. However, before arguing, they should think about why people like to take Uber instead of a taxi. Of course, the primary reason is the price, but the secondary reason is the value and the quality. Even Uber is cheaper, their cars are cleaner and newer, and actually most of the Uber drivers in Taiwan, the habits are better than local taxi drivers which just pointed out in the former paragraph, not smoking, not chewing betel nuts, obeying the traffic rules. Their speaking and action will make you feel comfortable.

As for the governments, they raised the fine to against Uber. Uber drivers are not permanent employees. They just belong to part-time jobs. The most important part that governments wanted to stop Uber because of the taxes. “‘As long as they provide services in Taiwan, they have to pay sales taxes,”’ (Taiwan) the mistakes of Uber are not paying sales taxes, however, all of the profit goes towards the headquarter of Uber in San Francisco, California, United States (Wikipedia). There is a consequence that they ignored. All of the drivers are Taiwanese. The government banned Uber, and where those Uber drivers can go. The average wages of drivers can up to NT$115-124 (Uber). The results of government's’ decision were not only blocked Uber to stay, they banned those drivers’ chance to survive at the same time. Many people applied for a loan to buy a car in order to be a driver.

Since Uber entered Taiwan, the governments passed a new law that raised the maximum fine, penalizing outlawed company of transportation, from about 4,687 dollars to 780,000 dollars which were multiple times than before. It was the highest fine Uber has ever confronted (Sui). That is quite unfair to Uber. Taiwan doesn’t like western countries or China which have a lot of large enterprises to support the country. Uber wasn’t only bringing jobs, they brought money.

Taiwan should open the gate to those international companies instead of blocking them out of it. Uber changed people’s way to take a taxi. People don’t stand on the sidewalk waving their hand. They use their phone booking immediately. It’s faster and saves your time and more convenient. Therefore, why Taiwan did have the ability to say no to Uber. Why other 80 countries can allow Uber. Make it reasonable. Listen to the sounds of people. If there wasn’t a company called Uber, how many people still couldn’t find a job.

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